January 20 Thursday – In Hartford Sam wrote to Rev. C.D. Crane (1849- ) of New Castle Maine, who had written asking three questions: what were the best books he might recommend for boys, for girls? And also what Everett Emerson calls the “desert island question” — that is, which books would Sam save if he could only save a few? (Crane’s incoming not extant.) Crane was evidently polling various authors for their choices for the purpose of publishing the results, since Sam wrote again on Jan. 24, making a substitution.

When one is going to choose twelve authors, for better for worse, forsaking fathers & mothers to cling unto them & unto them alone, until death shall them part, there is an awfulness about the responsibility that makes marriage with one mere individual & divorcible woman a sacrament sodden with levity by comparison.

In my list I know I should put Shakspeare; & Browning; & Carlyle (French Revolution only); Sir Thomas Malory (King Authur); Parkman’s Histories (a hundred of them if there were so many); Arabian Nights; Johnson (Boswell’s), because I like to see that complacent old gasometer listen to himself talk; Jowett’s Plato; & “B.B.” (a book which I wrote some years ago, not for publication but just for my own private reading.)

I should be sure of these; & I could add the other three — but I should want to hold the opportunity open a few years, so as to make no mistake [MTP]. [Note: the “B.B.” book is unidentified, but may relate to the Noah’s Ark book as a “Bible” book]. (See Jan. 24 entry.)

Sam also wrote to William H. Gross of Brown & Gross, Hartford bookseller, who had replied to Sam’s Jan. 15 inquiry about two books. Gross had the book by John Richard Green in half-calf and could get the Macaulay also in half-calf from Estes & Lauriat of Boston for $11.50. Sam said okay, “send ‘em along”[MTP].

Sam also wrote, responding to John Russell Young, who was now in New York. Since Young had asked certain business questions, so Sam referred him to “Webster’s end of the concern.” Sam added that Edward H. House, “poor fellow, has had an unusually bad turn lately” [MTP]. Note: Young, who had begun writing for the New York Tribune years before, since 1885 was a correspondent from Europe for the New York Herald. In 1890 President William McKinley would appoint him Librarian of Congress.

Charles Webster wrote from N.Y.,

Pond has been in and finally I have offered him $1000 down and $500 more when B. [Beecher] has delivered the manuscript to the autobiography which is to be written after the “Life of Christ” is finished [MTP]. Note: Also mentioned was a “beautifully bound red tree calf McClellan,” bound by J. Tapley. See Jan. 25 for Sam’s reply.